Nordic Commercial Arbitration Forum 2025
Nordic Arbitration: A Strategic Choice for Business
Abstract
The arbitration community in the Nordic region is vibrant. All five of the Nordic countries have arbitration institutes: the Danish Institute of Arbitration (DIA) in Denmark, the Arbitration Institute of the Finnish Central Chamber of Commerce (FAI) in Finland, the Nordic Arbitration Center at the Iceland Chamber of Commerce (GVI), the Nordic Offshore & Maritime Arbitration Association (NOMA) and the Arbitration and Dispute Resolution Institute of the Oslo Chamber of Commerce in Norway and the SCC Arbitration Institute in Sweden. Several of these institutes administer considerable amount of domestic and international arbitration disputes. In addition, many disputes are settled in the Nordic countries under the rules of the ICC International Court of Arbitration or ad hoc.
The Nordic region could, to a considerable extent, be regarded as a domestic market in the commercial and contract law area. The choice of, for example, Swedish law means that significant and important parts of Danish, Finnish, Icelandic and Norwegian law are also included or at least could be considered when arguing a case. The parties and their advisers as well as the judges can thus be inspired by and seek support in the legal literature, legislation and case law of the other countries. This is something that provides an additional strength to arbitration in the area, as one would otherwise be confined to material in relatively small jurisdictions, which cannot be compared with, for example, such jurisdictions as the United Kingdom.
There are also other reasons for emphasizing the Nordic dimension. For example, when Danish law is chosen, a chair from one of the other Nordic countries can be appointed with confidence that they are sufficiently familiar with Danish law as part of the laws of the Nordic legal family and are familiar with the rules, general doctrines and legal concepts there, even if they come from another country in the Nordic region.
In 2023, an initiative was launched by the academic institutes in the Nordic countries to strengthen Nordic commercial and contract law in various ways. One part of this work is to strengthen arbitration in the Nordic region by working with the institutes and others to actively market the Nordic region as a suitable place for international arbitration. One way of doing this was to arrange a conference with the participation of all the institutes mentioned above, the purpose of which was to highlight the special features of Nordic law and arbitration in the Nordic countries.
Therefore, the Nordic Commercial Arbitration Forum was established as a biannual event to provide a forum for discussing different aspects of dispute settlement in the Nordic region.
The first conference, with the theme "Nordic Arbitration: A strategic choice for business" took place on 11 March 2025 in Stockholm at the premises of the SCC Arbitration Institute. At this conference different themes were discussed by different speakers or panels of speakers:
• Arbitration in the Nordic countries: How do the Nordics stand out and what explains the high level of arbitration activities in the Nordics?
• Insights in and experience of disputes in the Nordics from a commercial perspective • Presentation survey results in relation to Nordic Arbitral Institutions
• Presentation of the institutes in the Nordic countries and their activities
• Overview of professional experiences in the field of arbitration under Nordic arbitration rules, as arbitrator or as counsel
• Shared characteristics of the legal systems in the Nordic countries: How arbitration works in the Nordic context. What are the Nordic elements in international arbitration?
• Experiences in negotiating agreements and what factors to consider when deciding on choice of law, choice of seat, and the form of dispute resolution
These themes were discussed by more than 25 practitioners, academics, and representatives of the arbitration institutes (see the detailed programme below).
In this book, some of the panellists share their insights on the subject. In addition, the report "2025 Survey Report on Nordic Arbitral Institutions – Mapping Nordic Arbitral Institutions" by Ms Natalia Petrik is presented.
The conference would not have been possible to realise without the assistance and generous support from the SCC and the Swedish law firms Mannheimer Swartling and Vinge. And this book would not have been possible without the great work by Natalia Petrik and Therese Isaksson (Westerberg & Partners), Daria Kozlowska-Rautiainen (Stockholm University) and Monica Seifert (KTH).
The next conference will be organised in Oslo in 2027 by the Oslo Centre for Commercial Law and the Norwegian Arbitration Association.
By Prof., Jur. Dr. Johnny Herre
